AS she greeted her guests, a tornado of children swept into the front hall by her, the Mullinses crying:
"Ma! where's the gum? Ma! Ma! where's the gum?"
"Give me a wad, too, Birdie," commanded Mr. Mullins. "I know some folks don't think gum's elegant, but when you're covering your hundreds on a dusty road, it does help, don't it, Birdie?"
Alice looked upon her offspring tucking the forbidden fruit away in their jaws. She went to the kitchen to placate Laurie and order innumerable broiled chickens.
Looking out of the kitchen window, Alice saw what seemed to her the disintegration of her family. She never had seen less lovely children. They embodied all the unpleasant traits of both parents, and they had doubled their parents' high spirits, which they gave vent to by noise and by monkeyshines. Now one Charley-Chaplined across the grass: he was followed by an ecstatic Robert. Jamie, with his feet at right angles, waddled gravely after. Both the Marcey boys had followed in their father's footsteps; they had found their ideal in Bill Mullins, Junior.
The Mullins boy of Sara's age was engaged in teaching her to make new and extraordinarily unpleasant faces. She heard the little girl cry:
"Let's play Slump, and the boys try to get us to walk."
It was a game that needed no explanation to Sara. Both little girls flopped upon the grass, limp and un-
